Top 15 Cloud Storage Tips and Tasks - fenstersteptach1964

No single cloud service can serve everything. Some shine when it comes to streaming a cloud music collection from the WWW, merely stench at syncing desktop folders. Other cloud services are outstanding for sharing photos, only useless for reviewing a document's revision history.

Because non altogether cloud storage providers are created equal, we looked at current offerings from Amazon Cloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft SkyDrive, and SugarSync, pinpointing the services with the top attributes for accomplishing specific tasks. Along the way we assembled tips and hints for performing sophisticated cloud storage tasks such A merging sevenfold free cloud services into extraordinary large free megacloud.

With so many virgin and improved online services vying to suit your preferred online repository for documents, photos, euphony, and video files, why settle for just one? Habit them all. Here are 15 awesome ways to get the most out of the free cloud repositing craze.

The Best Shipway to Sync Your Music Crosswise Multiple PCs

You have many options for sharing a single music collection among several different PCs, such as using the Home Sharing feature in iTunes or online services ilk iCloud or Google Medicine. Another alternative is to drop off your music aggregation into your taint warehousing leaflet and have your desktop jukebox computer programme (so much American Samoa Windows Media Player) point to that folder as the default music location. Then, once you put in your preferable cloud's desktop client on complete your PCs, you'll instantly download your music to tenfold computers. Dependent on the size of your song accumulation, you may have to invite spare storage to fit complete of IT in the taint.

Course, you can also follow this tip to sync any kind of media assemblage, much as photos, videos, or DRM-free ebooks.

The Best Slipway to Sync Local Folders to the Cloud

If you want to sync folders to the corrupt without placing them inside your mottle folder, you can find several services ready to help. Ubuntu One from Canonical, available for Windows and Ubuntu Linux desktops, includes the ability to add any pamphlet to your cloud storage without restless it.

Another pick is to use the recently released desktop customer for Amazon Cloud Drive. Defile Drive does not place a new folder connected your background as Google Drive, Dropbox, SkyDrive, and Ubuntu One Doctor of Osteopathy. Instead, Windows users can right-click any folder and select Virago Fog Drive from the 'Send to' menu option to sync to Amazon River. The downside with Cloud Drive is that you can entree your files only via a Web web browser.

The High-grade Shipway to Rain bucket Your Cloud Euphony Library

Streaming your music from the cloud is a very different proposition than syncing IT across multiple PCs, since some cloud services (such as Dropbox) don't offer comprehensive music streaming features. Your best bet is to use a dedicated online music inspection and repair. Amazon, for lesson, offers Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, which let Android and iOS users stream stored music files. You get 5GB of unpaid online store from Amazon Cloud Motor, and any music purchases you make through the online retail merchant's MP3 store and hold open to Obnubilate Drive do non count against your storage boundary.

Music on Google Play, formerly known as Google Music, offers free storage for 20,000 songs, and any tunes you purchase from the company's music store do non count against your limit. You fanny listen to songs via Google's Music app for Android 2.2 or later, or you can use the World Wide Web interface.

If you experience in the iOS ecosystem, Apple offers a service called iTunes Match that lets you upload 25,000 songs to iCloud for $25 per year. Your tracks, including iTunes playlists, then sync across your PCs and iOS devices.

Ubuntu One users can pay $4 per month or $40 per year to stream music from Canonical's cloud service. With your yearly subscription, you also get an redundant 20GB of online storage, which gives you board for other 5000 songs. In addition, Ubuntu Cardinal offers music-moving mobile apps for Mechanical man and iOS that include caching, thus you can listen to your music without an Net connection.

[Related: Five Services That Can Move Your Music to the Cloud up]

TIP: Blast 'My Documents' to the Mottle

If you'ray a Windows user and you want all of your documents available in the cloud, you can turn a cloud storage pamphlet into your Windows 'My Documents' folder. I did it using a subfolder interior Dropbox with the Windows 8 Consumer Preview. To get started, agape Windows Explorer, attend Dropbox, and produce a new folder called Documents. Next, go to My Documents, right-click the folder, and prime Properties.

In the My Documents Properties panel, pick out the Location tab and click the Strike… button. Navigate to the DropboxDocuments folder you just created, and click the Select Folder button. This action will return you to the properties panel, where you need to click Apply. A windowpane will appear, asking whether to move all your old files to the new Documents folder (click Yes). Now, every time you save a new file, it will attend Dropbox by default.

Hint: Sync Your To-Do List

If you save your to-manage list as a plain-text file, you can then synchronize your list crossways every your devices–including your PCs, smartphones, and tablets–past using cloud storage. Just drop your Todo.txt file into your Dropbox, Google Drive, or SkyDrive storage, and you can and so access IT anywhere you have an Internet connection and a copy editor.

You can besides turn away your plain-school tex list into an interactive smartphone app, with help from Todo.txt Touch for Android and iOS.

The Best Ways to Automatize Smartphone Photo Uploads

Since you carry your smartphone everywhere you go, you've probably occupied it with snapshots you ne'er need to drop off. Many haze over reposition providers can service you hindmost them dormie. If you have an iPhone, you can use iCloud to back your last 1000 photos and sync them across your devices. Windows Phone users can find a similar feature film for SkyDrive. Google+ for Android has an Instant Upload feature article that mechanically sends your snaps to Google's social network; your photos will persist tete-a-tete until you opt to bring out them in a post. Dropbox recently added an automatic photo upload feature to its Android app, and Prescript's Ubuntu One offers self-activating uploads for Android and iOS.

TIP: Send Mail Attachments to the Taint

Why trouble searching through galore months' worth of electronic mail to find attachments when you can just redeem everything to the cloud? Many a screen background chain armour programs will let you specify where attachments should be saved. Then, whenever you download an adherence, it will go to a single booklet that you can access anywhere.

The Best Ways to Access a PC Remotely via Cloud Memory board

Microsoft's SkyDrive offers remote admittance to all your Windows PCs, including attached outside drives, that induce the SkyDrive desktop client. During installation of the desktop client, you will be asked to authorize remote get at. Afterward the client is installed, log in to skydrive.com along a Web web browser from another computer.

In the left wing column, you will see a 'Computers' section listing all the Windows PCs connected to your SkyDrive chronicle. Select the computer you want, and then SkyDrive may ask you to enter a Captain Hicks-finger code sent via email to

authorize remote accession. (The potency code bequeath not go under to your Hotmail account statement, but to your alternate email destination that Windows Live has on file.) After you enter the authorisation code, you can access your PC's file cabinet organisation via the SkyDrive Web interface. To utilise this feature film on a mobile device so much as the iPad, you will accept to enable the PC variant of the web site at the bottom of the Webpage.

If SkyDrive doesn't pastime you, SugarSync provides similar remote-sync capabilities for Windows and Mac.

TIP: Broadcast Website Written document Links to Dropbox

A beta service called URL Droplet lets you send documents (so much as PDFs and spreadsheets) found on Vane pages directly to your Dropbox, no manual download necessary. Simply sign dormie for URL Droplet and authorize the service to access your Dropbox; URL Droplet uses the Dropbox API, which means the service never sees your account password. Next, paste a link to the online document, and click Salvage. The file will look in Dropbox and sync crosswise all your devices.

TIP: Electronic mail Items Directly to Dropbox

The unbound service Send To Dropbox lets you hand out a public email cover so that people can send things directly to your Dropbox. You can have the service mechanically create folders and subfolders based on the email subject, the sender's email address, or the date the document was sent. You butt also tell Send To Dropbox to unzip archived files mechanically and include copies of the email messages sent.

The Best Ways to Oversee Document Variant Control

You've in all probability detected that Google Docs has a built-in version-control system so that you can go back and view recent versions of a collaborative document, but did you know that Dropbox and SkyDrive offer like services?

Dropbox keeps a snap of every saved file over the past 30 days; if you delete an all-important paragraph and need it back, you can recoup it atomic number 3 long as you saved a version of that file to Dropbox in the past month. Go to your Dropbox folder, select the file you want to see, and so right-click IT and choice View Previous Versions from the circumstance card. This action will take you to a Network page listing your latest file saves for that document, including the revision date and World Health Organization denatured the file. Dropbox typically shows only ten changes per page, so chatter the Older> link to see more changes from the last 30 years.

In SkyDrive, you can visualise adaptation history by selecting a file from the Web port and and so exit to Indian file, Previous Versions. This action will get up a sidebar with whol of your latest document changes.

SugarSync likewise offers a version-control feature, only IT is inferior robust since IT keeps only your last v file saves.

TIP: Don't Rely connected the Obnubilate for Television Flowing

Cloud storage helps you entree your files anywhere you can get an Internet connection–except when IT comes to television. Since streaming video takes up more bandwidth than downloading a document or moving music, how much you can stream depends on your cloud provider. During my testing with a 315MB, 77-minute M4V file, Dropbox streamed the uncastrated content when I used the service's mobile apps. But I could non sentry the video in a waterborne web browser, and on my PC I was able to watercourse only a 15-minute preview.

Google Drive let me opinion the entire video content on the Web, simply streaming didn't work on any of the floating devices I tried. In addition, Google Drive makes you wait while it processes the video file for streaming.

TIP: Inscribe Your Cloud

If security is a bigger concern for you, reckon encrypting your information before sending it to the cloud. The easiest way to do this is to practice Spideroak, an encrypted cloud-backing service that lets you back up ad hoc files to the cloud and then sync them across double devices.

Some other option is to encrypt your data locally in front storing information technology in Dropbox, SkyDrive, Google Drive, or some of the other cloud services. Mack users should read Macworld's tutorial on how to make over an encrypted sparse project exploitation OS X's constitutional Disc Utility. You can also try the outdoors-source program TrueCrypt for Linux, Atomic number 76 X, operating room Windows to encrypt personal files you want to send to the cloud; check out PCWorld's TrueCrypt instructor to get started.

TIP: Merge Multiple Services Into a Monster Cloud

If you have files spread across a enumerate of obscure storage accounts, such as at Amazon S3, Box, Dropbox, Picasa, SkyDrive, and SugarSync, look to Otixo. Finished this service, you tail end connect them totally, and so sweep and drop files between your respective cloud providers, no file downloading necessary. It plant connected all but whatever browser, including on mechanised devices. Otixo is free for improving to 250MB of bandwidth usage each calendar month, or $10 for unqualified access to the service.

[Related: 10 Google Docs Annoyances (and How to Fix Them)]

Versatile cloud storage services deliver different multiethnic networking capabilities for sharing images. If you want to share photos along Google+, then Google Drive is your easiest option (atomic number 102 surprise) since Google+ photo sharing is built in. SkyDrive users can base photos directly to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and email from SkyDrive's Web interface, although your friends will have to chatter SkyDrive to see the full-size versions.

Dropbox allows you to apportion a public link to photos, just in my tests this function didn't work in particular cured with Facebook and Google+. Another option is to role Flickr to share photos via Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Twitter, and email; again, your buddies will have to visit Flickr to see the full-size version if you share on Facebook.

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